Experiences with Wagner W450SE airless spray gun

[Dengue]

I have an Earlex 1900 HVLP entry level spray outfit from Carbatec, and was disappointed with the results when using water-based (WB) Taubman paints, having to thin it down so much, and being unable to lay down a good solid line of spray in a single pass or two. It was so slow to get good coverage. Looking at the Earlex webiste videos confirmed just how slow the painting process with this particular entry level gun is.

A thread on this forum indicated that airless spray guns were the best way of handling this type of WB paint. After looking everywhere, I found a Wagner W450SE unit on eBay for $200, normally $300 in Bunnies and other shops.

Tried it out today, and here are my first impressions:

1. Heavy as.... with the motor and the pot of paint and the pump all in the one hand-held unit, at the end of a long session this will feel like a tonne weight
2. The cup is a real pain to screw on, and you tend to spill paint when it gets slightly tilted while trying to fit it to the gun
3. Noisy - will annoy neighbours
4. Goes through paint like a dose of salts - really sucks it up - not like the HVLP unit. A second pot ready to go is essential. I did see a kit that will take paint directly from the paint tin here
5. You really need a 3rd pot full of water so that you run it through the gun immediately on completion of painting, before the paint dries.
6. Fair bit of paint wasted on overspray at the start and finish of each run across the workpiece, because it pushes out so much paint.
7. The paint intake tube finishes about 40% of the height of the pot, with a 25mm high filter screwed to the lower end of the intake tube, another reason for the cup of paint not lasting long.
8. Needs to be held upright - tip it forward and if the paint is not in the intake tube, it sends forth splutter marks on to your work. Will be a real PIA doing horizontal workpieces I notice you can buy a flexible tube and atomiser for horizontal work.
9. When the paint level falls below the bottom of the intake tube, you get splutter again - the only way you know you are getting to the half way mark!
10. It is a circular donut spray pattern, empty in the middle. Give me the narrow conical spray any time !
11. I didn't have to thin the WB paint, but used 5% Floetrol to be sure. ( see later post - perhaps I should have thinned it more to reduce spluttering)
12. Unlike the HVLP, it lays down a good line of WB paint
13. With the output set to 50%, and moving the gun in close, it does edges quite well, but lots of waste with the circular spray pattern
14. The manual is not very clear on how to clean the gun, other than to run clean water through it
15. You have to put drops of oil in the intake hole, to lubricate the pump before you use it. Strange, that oil will probably come out with the paint on your work


I have attached a picture of the tests I did before painting. The legend is:

1. The spray pattern with the gun stationary at about 200mm distance
2. The line of spray with the gun moving at about 200mm distance
3. The spray pattern with the gun at a further distance
4. The spray pattern at 50% output and 150mm distance ( for edging etc)
5. The splutter if the paint level falls below the intake tube for any reason ( tilting or paint used up)

I would appreciate any comments about these observations, esp on:
Is this spray pattern correct? What about the crosses in the stationary pattern?
How best to clean this gun? esp how do you get the pump housing out to clean it?
How best to use it, with this strange pattern, and finally,
What the effect of the oil is on your work.

[Dave50]

I agree Jill, these things are pretty dreadful, thats why I tried to talk you into something like the eager beaver, I've had mine for years and given it heaps, it just keeps on coming up trumps! from cars to fine furniture it's the next best thing to a compressor driven spray unit

[Dengue]

Ooops... Thanks anyway Dave. I have to learn the hard way, as usual

[Dengue]

I have read the manual a bit closer. You are supposed to take the swirl valve and nozzle out after finishing the main session. Did this, and found them to be quite clean, as I had been spraying clean water through the gun between coats using my spare pot.

You then add oil and run the gun briefly ( without paint or any other fluid?) Presumably this lubricates the pump.

I find the container nearly emptied before spluttering when I was running water through the gun - perhaps I should have thinned the paint more so that it flowed more easily through the filter at the bottom of the intake pipe. I suspect this may have been clogging up a bit.

Perhaps even put a couple of marbles in the pot to keep the paint and Floetrol mixing.

[Dengue]

Well, I finally found some good information on the Wagner site here, which provided much more information than the user manual that came with it. In fact I found the manual was a bit misleading in places, esp in relation to cleaning the spraygun. At the end of each session you are supposed to fully dismantle the moving parts of the gun and clean, ie., take the pump off and dismantle it and clean with a brush supplied.

I bought two more items to try out - a 0.6mm circular nozzle instead of the standard 0.8mm nozzle that came with the unit, and the suction extension kit that sucked directly from the paint tin.

I also decided to thin the paint more that I did in my first attempts in earlier posts to this thread. Wagner recommend 25-50 sec viscosity, but after adding 25% Floetrol and 150mm water to 1.0 litre of Taubman's "3 in 1" primer, I still could not achieve anywhere near this viscosity, so decided to run with it. In the end, with the smaller 0.6mm nozzle, it took 4 litres of primer to coat 20 sq.m of doors. This is way in excess of the recommended coverage of 12 sq.m per litre on the label

The other key thing that I did was to try out the fine adjustment knob on the rear of the spraygun, to get as uniform a circular pattern as possible, and this gave a much better pattern that the one shown above, with nearly a uniform circular pattern resulting, rather than the donut shape originally achieved.

The gun is still very heavy, and my arm was trembling with exhaustion at the end of a session spraying 3 large doors.

The suction extension kit hose is only 1.8m long, so you have to hold the end of the hose in the paint tin and take it with you, tin in one hand, gun in the other. During the time it takes the paint to travel the 1.8m from the tin to the gun, the gun is operating without any fluid for a minute or so, some thing that is warned about in the manual. It is easy for the hose and filter on the end to come out of the paint ( evidenced by heavy splutters on your workpiece), so I used a 2 litre tin with a handle and held that and the hose tightly. Carrying a 4 litre tin of paint around would be very tiring. I found the edge clip supplied by Wagner to hold the hose to the edge of the paint tin is useless, so I had to grip the hose against the handle of the tin to keep it in position at all times. All the same, this was not enough to stop the tin from tipping over at one stage in the middle of the job - paint everywhere, on floor, shoes, power cord, extension cord connector etc. What a mess!!

The beauty of the suction extension kit is that you can see when the paint level is getting down to the level where it starts sucking air through the filter, and can refill before the splutters start. With a 2 litre container, it carries 2.5 times the amount of paint in the pot that is normally used on the gun. If anyone can suggest a method of making the tin and the suction kit hose stable and the hose locked in position, that would be truly appreciated.

The other interesting thing is that by reducing the volume output to 12.5%, and holding the gun close to the work, you can do the edges of the doors quite well.

Overall, I feel I have come a long way since my first effort above. The gun requires a lot of trial and error to work properly with water based paints, but once that is done the results are much better than the HVLP I was using previously - much quicker. Its weight is a problem on big jobs, and the suction extension kit, although virtually increasing the size of the pot, still requires the tin of paint and hose to be carried around on the job, and still requires the hose to be manually held in position.

The smaller diameter nozzle made quite a difference, as did the fine adjustment knob and the thinning of the paint. Pity I couldn't get the paint any thinner, but I did not get any runs on the doors done standing vertically. In fact there was a fair bit of orange peel effect where I got too close. You cannot use this gun on a horizontal surface unless you buy a separate flexible extension that points downwards

Thsi gun is not really suitable for fine work. It is intended for a heavy application quickly, on walls etc. This link shows the correct applications for this airless spraygun

Hope this helps other people considering buying this unit.

[munruben]

These cheap "airless" spray guns are really not much more than toys and depending on the type of work you need to do they can be quite frustrating. Practice practice with it and get the viscosity right and you should be able to spray at around 300mm from the surface. Airless spray painting has a great reputation and is a terrific method of painting. Unfortunately a cheap airless spray is like buying a cheap tool of any description, it wont do the job of the more expensive tools.

I was painting with airless equipment for many years but the equipment I used cost in the region of $5000 so hardly comparable with a $300 dollar spray gun. It has always been my contention with spray painting equipment, to overkill for the application you are going to use it for. If you need a 5cfm for the task, buy a 10cfm for the job and you wont be disappointed. Believe me, there is no such thing as a good, cheap airless spray machine. I was using these machines for over 20 years and tried them all. Wagner is one of the best machines but not cheap if you want a good one. With top of the line machines you don't even need to thin the paint, it will spray straight from the can but like I said, very costly for that kind of a machine.

Having said that, the little gun you have bought will do small jobs quite admirably once you learn how to use it and don't expect too much from it.

If you use the gun frequently and going to use it again in a few hours, it is not really necessary to disassemble the gun completely every time you use it. Manufacturers go a bit overboard in their instructions. Spraying water through the gun until it is clear will do the job for you but once in a while and if you are going to store the gun for a while, then take it apart and give it a good clean. you can control the paint flow with the controls of the gun to suit your needs when spraying but that is something you will learn as you go along. Good luck with it.

BTW there is no comparison between an airless spray gun and a compressor spray gun if you want to spray acrylic paints, compressed air will not atomize acrylics or water based paints successfully.

[munruben]

Thsi gun is not really suitable for fine work. It is intended for a heavy application quickly, on walls etc..

you should be able to regulate the gun for fine work regardless, that is the beauty of airless spray if you get the combination just right, there is little or no overspray.

I would recommend to anyone contemplating purchasing an airless spray gun or machine who has little or no experience with them to try and see a demonstration of the gun they intend to purchase or if that isn't possible , hire one from a plant hire company and you can find out for yourself if the equipment fills your needs before you spend a few hundred dollars and find out its not powerful enough for your requirements.

[Dengue]

Many thanks for your wise comments, John, much appreciated.

Actually I thought $300 was pretty expensive for a DIY spray gun Then you have to get the extras, in my case another pot, a suction extension kit, and a couple of different size nozzles, and a couple of swirl valves, as they wear out quickly, esp with acrylic water based paints.

As you say, the trick is to practice, practice, practice and get comfortable with the limitations of the gun, and then to practice some more

Gee that gun is heavy!!

[gnu52]

Jill,
We use an old Wagner paint crew which is a hopper style unit. One thing that prevented a lot of trouble (I think) was that all product was put through a kitchen strainer with a stocking over it. Paint was used at full strength, the unit has done a lot of work and only recently required its first part. That was my fault, I will not lend it again, it was'nt cleaned properly. Perhaps both worthwhile tips.
Regards, Bill

[Ash240]

I would buy a clean paint tin of the size you want and cut a hole in the lid to pass the pickk up through. Medium pressure to fit the lid and you have a fitted system. You could also add a O ring or similar onto the hose on the can side to stop it pulling out.